Pages

Friday, February 19, 2010

Kids say the darndest... no... the most embarrassing things

So, yesterday's romp into my sordid past seemed to be a moderate success. I'm pleased I could make everyone laugh at my stupidity. That's not sarcasm. I love making people laugh. Yesterday, Pen Name Pauline Thomas asked if my kids ever did the same sort of thing, and I can think of two separate instances in public where my girls made me want to crawl in a hole to escape shame.

Eldest daughter. Let me set the scene:

We lived in a small burg outside of St. Louis. At the time, my girls were 8 and 4. I had divorced my husband for several reasons I won't go into. This is supposed to be funny. St. Louis has an amazing zoo, and it's free, so I took my girls there a few times a year. One summer, the zoo was all abuzz over the new baby giraffe, so I packed up the girls and we headed over.

The day was warm and beautiful, and we were having a great time (as I've mentioned before, I love to embarrass my girls in public, so I was having a really great time), and eventually we made it over to the giraffe exhibit.

The baby giraffe was standing with its mother to the left side of the fence. The father giraffe was on the far right, leaning against the wall under the shade of a large tree. My eight year old says, "The baby is so cute. I wonder if that's its daddy." I corrected her and said that the giraffe on the right was the father, and the baby was standing with its mother. "How do you know that one's the daddy?"

Now, being eight years old, I did not want to school her on the differences of anatomy between a male and a female. The couple standing next to us was looking at the giraffes, too, and the man gave me a quizzical look, probably wondering what I was going to say. In order to simplify the situation, I tried to go with, "I just know."

This was not good enough for my eight year old. She kept looking back and forth between the giraffes, frowning as she thought about it. After a moment, she stated emphatically, "Ooooh. It's 'cause he's just standing around not doing nothing, huh?"

The man next to us smiled knowingly. I returned a nervous one. I could just imagine that he thought I was the sort of woman who just sat around man-bashing all day or something similar, but I swear, I wasn't like that (at the time). I looked down at my daughter and said, "Um...yeah. Let's go."

I led my girls away, and the man next to us burst out laughing. I could hear him ask his partner, "did you hear what that little girl just said?"

Well, this got a bit long, so I'm not going to go into my youngest's most memorable public embarrassing moment right now. Maybe tomorrow or later today I'll get it posted, too. I hope this at least made you smile.

PS: I'm aware of all the adverbs and adjectives, but don't care today.

Well, you're a better parent than I apparently. If I had a girl ask that, I'd bring up the differences. God forbid I ever have a daughter. I will ruin them just by not having any idea how in the hell to deal with them.

Present!Mia - I can't help it. Kids and I are like...butter and coffee. And don't cringe at your past self. Past!Mia is just as cute and dorky as you and therefore just as coolsly. Never change. Either of you.

Four in the Morning

About Me

Free-lance Editor, Book Trailer Designer, and YA author. My first book, "Four in the Morning," is published through Immortal Ink Publishing and available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and... other places :-)